Ethel Harpst
Ethel Elizabeth Harpst was an American educator and caregiver who started the Harpst Home in Cedartown, Georgia. She was born October 27, 1883, in Georgia and died January 12, 1967, in Montgomery, Alabama, at age 83. She is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Cedartown.
In 1914, Harpst moved to Cedartown to work in the Goodyear Mill Village, helping people during outbreaks of scarlet fever, typhoid, influenza, and tuberculosis. She also taught adults to read and write at the Deborah McCarty Settlement House, which was modeled after Hull House in Chicago.
In March 1924, the Harpst Home was established after Cedartown city clerk J. C. Walker bought and gave the house to her. Located on Bradford Hill, it quickly needed more space. James Hall, a three-story brick building, was built in 1927, then the tallest in Cedartown. The Great Depression strained the program, but a new boys’ dorm opened in 1933. With fundraising and help from Henry Pfeiffer and Annie Merner Pfeiffer, the home expanded over the next 20 years, adding buildings and land.
The settlement offered night classes, a day nursery, clinics, classes for men, women, boys, and girls, and services for the sick and grieving.
In 1984, the United Methodist Church merged Harpst Home with the Sarah Murphy Home to form the Murphy-Harpst Children's Centers in Cedartown, which continues today to care for abused children with state partners.
Harpst retired in 1951 at age 68. She received the Good Neighbor Orchid Award in 1948 on the radio show Breakfast in Hollywood. In 2012, she was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 01:27 (CET).